The mistake many companies make when it comes to employee advocacy is that this is about distributing content. In fact, this is a massive mistake.
First and foremost employee advocacy is about activating the employees and empowering them to look like experts online. In the B2B world clients are avoiding salespeople and looking for experts who they can build a relationship with who can guide them. Now we could argue that everybody is a salesperson and people may contact your organization for a variety of reasons. To buy something, for a job, to form a partnership. It's not to us to prescribe how those approaches will happen.
Which is why some people will push back and say "I'm not a salesperson". Which is why this is not about pushing out content, but getting people to understand that they have a collected responsibility to help the company in the digital world. You are a professional organization and that means looking profesional online. Not necessarily as a salesperson but being professional, just as you would turning up to a meeting with a prospect and a customer.
Which is why employee advocacy is not about distributing content, it's about each employee having a personal brand, building a strong network and sharing content. The sharing of content could be written by themselves, it could be curated from a product such as flipboard or it could be corporate content.
Once people are empowered and understand their place in the digital world the sharing of content comes organically.
or any successful employee advocacy program, it’s important to know who your employees are, and what kind of attention they need. Employees in any workplace fall into one of three categories as it relates to employee advocacy. Employees who promote content already. Employees who don’t want to promote content. Employees who want to promote content but aren’t for a variety of reasons. In a perfect world, 100% of your employees will be extremely active in your employee advocacy program, but we know that won’t happen – at least not right away. Instead, what you should do is focus on the third group of employees by enabling them to be part of the program.
